13. Harper
Chapter 13
Harper
The heat of our morning wake-up call cools into a bizarre, hyperaware form of apathy. Cian won’t look me in the eye, but his gaze touches my skin every second. He walks close but doesn’t manhandle me the way he did yesterday. It’s like he’s wary of me. Or trying to be thoughtful.
Either way, it unsettles me.
How I’m acting must be even stranger. I skirt around his hands, watching his fingers as if they’ll grab me at any second. In my mind, I tell myself I’m staying vigilant, but really, I’m afraid I’ll kiss Cian if I look at his face too closely.
I wonder if I’m going to battle that urge all day.
Cian apparently came here without packing a bag, so he’s in the honeymoon groom outfit from yesterday. He can get away with that, but not me. So the first stop we make after we’re both as dressed as we can be is Fukuoka Farms. His condition for my going to work today, of course, is that I’ll spend every second under his supervision.
I expected that, so his constant presence won’t get in the way of my escape plan.
When I study him out of the corner of my eye, I wonder whether Cian Mahoney is capable of falling in love. If that back there demonstrates what he’s like when messing around with a woman he couldn’t care less about, what will he be like when he finds one he adores?
What kind of woman would it take to finally earn his genuine affection?
Cian steers the Porsche through the bright, wide open lands of Oahu’s North Shore. For a few uninterrupted miles, it seems we’re the only people on Earth.
He rolls down all the windows, letting in the salty air. With wind whipping my hair around my face, I probably look like I fell out of a clothes dryer by the time we make it back to the Fukuokas’. But, luckily for me, they won’t be there, and my disheveled appearance will buy me more of the precious time I need to orchestrate this escape.
Cian waits on the main floor of the house as I run up to my room and prepare. I shower in a flash and wrench my hair up into a ponytail. The first thing I’m going to do when I get away is hack off my blond waves with a pair of scissors. I’ll dye it too. No one will recognize me as the girl I used to be ever again.
I dress in a pair of designer, dark-wash jeans and a blouse, the comfiest clothes I have that can pass for business casual. From under my bed, I rip out the crossbody bag I keep all my cash in. I peel a few thousand dollars off the top and leave it in a shoe box with a note for the Fukuokas. It’s the same note I left for my father when I ran out on Finn.
Just two words on a small slip of paper.
I’m sorry.
There’s too much to explain, and I don’t want them to think I was kidnapped. I want them to know I left on my own and accept full responsibility for the shittiness of my abandonment.
The rest of the money comes with me in the bag. I take one last look at this room where I’ve slept for the past two months. This was my home for a little while. I don’t know where the next one will be, but I’d be foolish to think it might be half as nice. Being a small part of a normal family for once…
When I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror, a few tears trickle down my face. I look like shit, really. I’m very tempted to apply my makeup, but I don’t want to give Cian the impression that I made myself up for him .
Honestly, I think I’d rather die.
So I leave exactly the way I am. On a normal week, today would be a farmhand workday. But I’ve told Cian I’m due to work a shift in Waikiki, same as yesterday.
I want to apologize to Paul and Mike for the way I ran out on the job yesterday, and most importantly, I need to trick them into helping me get away from Cian.
The drive back to Waikiki is painful. Breezy silence. Sexual tension. I almost stick my head out the window like a dog, just to suck down more air.
Cian doesn’t glimpse over at me once while we drive. Meanwhile, I sneak peeks at his lap, unable to stop myself from imagining what it would be like to climb into it and bounce for a while.
This has been the strangest day of my life, hands down.
We arrive at Dish around noon, which turns out to be perfect. The lunch rush has the place swamped . Mike appears ready to sing when I waltz through the door. Cian, a few paces behind me, glances toward the patio…probably for any evidence of the fight he started yesterday.
Speaking of disasters, I completely forgot about Anna’s injury. She won’t be walking normally for a few weeks, and I eagerly volunteer to fill in, starting immediately. I show Cian to a table in the back, like he’s a regular guest, and go through the motions of hosting, sensing his eyes on my back the entire time.
As I work, I try not to glance too often at the clock hanging on the wall next to the front door. Today is Wednesday, which means my salvation will arrive around two-thirty this afternoon.I just have to play it cool until then.
And test Cian’s response time, the same way I did while working for my father.
First, I go to the bathroom on my break. I sit in a stall, staring at a little watch I bought myself weeks ago. I’m timing how long it takes for Cian to become suspicious.
When I come out around the eight-minute mark, he’s leaning outside the door by the water fountain. He doesn’t have to speak. His folded arms say it all.
Don’t think I’m going to slip up just because of what happened this morning.
I won’t underestimate you , I don’t say in reply.
He follows me as far as the restaurant’s main aisle. There, he breaks left, headed back to his table, and I return to the host stand.
Cian’s far more responsive than my father. Just eight minutes? How the fuck am I going to pull this off?
Worry spreads like juicy gossip through my gut. I’m trying to keep it together because, just like getting stuck out in open water, panicking now equals death. If I seem nervous about something, Cian’s surveillance will only get more intense. I need to act as if today is a normal day, but instead, I can’t get the sensation of his tongue devouring me out of my mind.
I try to focus on customers by leading people to their tables, complimenting tourists, asking about booster seats for small children. And every time the weight of Cian’s eyes bores into the back of my skull, I get hot beneath my clothes, like he’s the direct sun on a gorgeous, humid summer day in the tropics.
Maybe I like it when he watches me, which is so odd. I never did before.
Then again, until this morning, I’d never come on someone’s face before either.
My heart starts to flip and flop in my chest as the time winds down.
The moment of truth nears.
A tall family of five walks in. My fingers shake as I grab a pile of menus and begin the hot walk onto the patio. Cian’s eyes follow me from inside, as far they can.
Eight minutes. That’s all the time I’ll get from the moment I can’t sense his eyes anymore to gun it out of here. I seat the family, trying not to sweat too much or smile too hard, but their pleasant questions eat into my unspeakably precious getaway time.
As soon as I’m done with them, I zip to the section of the patio where the kitchen staff take their breaks and use the building’s back door to slip into the kitchen. Paul’s at the tail end of delivering foods from his family’s farm.
Most of the time, he just receives the deliveries, but on Wednesday he drives the truck himself. The few times we’ve both worked on a Wednesday, he’s always offered to drop me off down the street at the convenience store, so we can grab a snack.
Today, when I ride with him up the road, I’m going to leave. He’ll never see me again. As soon as I step up to the man in his Dish Waikiki t-shirt, long hair roped into a tight bun at the base of his neck, tears threaten to fall. I’m so thankful for him and his family, and I hate to do this to them.
I hate to just up and disappear.
“Snack run?” He lifts his eyebrows when he sees me because he already knows.
It’s our ritual.
I just nod, grabbing my bag with all the money off a hook on the wall. Behind me, Paul speaks again in a more melancholic tone.
“Mom and Dad told me you’re headed out of town for a while?”
I’ve all but forgotten about that frantic, cryptic text message I sent his parents last night, seconds before Cian chucked my phone out the window like a jackass.
“Yeah, family stuff.” I force the words out. My heart is dying, that dull ache beneath my ribs intensifying by the moment.
“If you don’t mind my asking…” Paul nods toward the back door. I’m three steps ahead of him. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine.” For a seasoned actress, I sound fake as hell.
“You ran off last night after things got rowdy on the patio, and we were worried someone had given you trouble.”
Cian’s fight flashes through my mind. The way our eyes met during that brawl with those dumb patrons. Yesterday, he was the devil’s messenger. And now when I think of him, it’s like he’s got his gigantic fist clenched tight around my cold, dead little heart.
“No trouble,” I lie with a tight smile before changing the subject. “Damn, I could go for some M&Ms about now.”
I want to shove Paul out the door and into his truck, but he’s taking his sweet time. And when I hear an enormous clatter coming from the hallway outside the kitchen door, I know my eight minutes are up. Big time.
“What was that?” Paul mutters, gravitating to the kitchen exit. The saloon door explodes open, nearly clipping him right in the face. Cian appears, red-faced and enraged. He spies me with the bag over my shoulder and Paul with the keys still jangling from his fingers and performs the math in moments.
In the three seconds we stand there, with Cian’s pissed-off, knife-like glare slicing into my face, I remember every dangerous thing I’ve witnessed Cian do in my life.
Including that night I hate to think about, the one when Dad’s operation went wrong. The man I was supposed to distract wound up dragging me down a hallway into an empty room and pinning me to a wall, muffling by screams with his hand. By the time he had my dress hiked up to my waist and was unzipping his pants, I was starting to dissociate. I floated above my body, detached yet spiraling into a dark pit of despair, when the door crashed open, and the room shook with an enraged roar.
“Get your fucking hands off her!”
Somone plucked my would-be rapist off me as easily as one might pull a toddler away from a dog. The air cracked, and my attacker’s head flew to the side. Blood sprayed in all directions as he fell to the floor.
The next thing I knew, Cian was racing up to me. “Harper, are you okay?”
I remember trying to answer but choking on a sob instead. I also recall the exact moment when Cian registered my appearance. The wicked, playful light that usually sparkled from his green eyes extinguished, leaving them glittering and sharp like faceted gems as he gently pulled my skirt back down to cover me and readjusted my bodice. Then he zeroed in on the red marks around my upper arms and neck, and I watched his entire body still like a predator’s.
Finally, I managed to speak. “Not okay yet, but I will be.”
His fingers grazed my cheek. “Brave girl. Now don’t move.” He whirled as my attacker stumbled to his feet. “You’re a dead man.”
His next punch knocked the man back to the ground. Cian jumped him, straddling his torso while his fist repeatedly crunched the other guy’s face, until his shrieks eventually stopped.
Cian rose and spit on his body. That was about the time my father found us. After cursing Cian out, he called for reinforcements.
While he dealt with logistics, I noticed the raw and swollen state of Cian’s knuckles and insisted on finding him an ice pack, ignoring the bewildered glance he kept sneaking my way.
Cian seems almost as angry now as he did then. And I know that if I don’t get him out of here, he’s going to make an example of Paul.
I couldn’t bear that.
“You’re not allowed back here—” Paul begins to say as I shove past him, my hands flying to Cian’s prodigious shoulders.
“Sorry!” I throw the word over my shoulder without looking back. “My boyfriend didn’t know.”
Putting force into my hands, I push Cian back the way he came, and I’m nothing short of amazed when his body actually shifts. Me trying to move Cian’s body without his consent would be as easy as me trying to push a double-wide Ford pickup down a street.
Unrealistic, useless, and an exercise in foolishness.
The minute we’re in the hallway, I head left down a short corridor that leads toward the staff break room. Cian’s on me in a flash. Just before we get to the door, I duck into a supply closet.
Cian slams the door shut behind us and engages the lock. I’m scared enough that I consider threatening to scream, but so aroused from his scent and proximity that my lips don’t move.
“Just what the fuck were you doing back there?” Fury underscores each syllable.
“Talking to my boss?—”
“ Leaving with your boss.” The force of his words makes me tremble, and I back up into a shelf full of extra table napkins and newly printed drink menus. The whole thing rattles behind me.
“We usually run an errand together about this time on Wednesdays.” My voice is small as a mouse’s. My gaze fixes on his chest because I don’t dare meet that glare head-on.
“So, he’s the one, huh?”
“What?”
“The guy you’ve been fucking since you got here.”
Say what?
My mouth drops open, but no sound comes out. I stammer, choking on my own silence. Is this really happening? Cian’s not upset because he thinks I tried to escape. He’s upset because…he thinks I’ve got something going with Paul ?
“No, I…”
The room we’re in is about the size of the closet in my suite back home, big enough to park an SUV but covered wall-to-wall with shelves and cleaning supplies. The only light in here streams in from a small window high up on a wall to our left, which provides a diagonal slant of filmy afternoon glow.
Cian steps into the beam of light, stalking closer to me.
“I knew you were out here chasing dick the entire time.” He reaches for me, his long, dangerous fingers alighting around my neck.
Considering the intensity of his anger, I half-expect him to choke the life out of me, but when his fingertips connect with my sensitive skin, we both start breathing strangely again, like we’re warming up for another marathon.
His expression, twisted with disbelief and mistrust, appears conflicted, like he can’t make up his mind on something crucial.
And then he grits out, “Why did you do it?”
“What are you talking about?” With my breathless, reedy voice, I sound like bimbo in an eighties porno minus the tacky saxophone swirling in the background.
“Why did you lie and tell me you hadn’t been with anyone since you’ve been here?” His fingers dig into the sides of my neck.
I shut my eyes, like that’ll make this crazy movie stop playing out in front of me.
Words I don’t know how to say flock to my tongue. I’m just telling him the truth, so why are my knees knocking together?
“Cian.”
“Don’t you dare say?—”
“The only person who’s touched me the past two months is you.”
“Stop trying to trick me.” His grip on my throat tightens, and why is he wrecking my underwear with every squeeze ?
“If there really was something between Paul and me, I wouldn’t have told him you were my boyfriend.”
“Look at me,” Cian commands.
Now, I’m face-to-face with this bizarre, beautiful, jealous jerk of a man.
“I know he’s trying to help you escape.” Cian’s other hand clamps onto my waist, making me jump. “But you won’t succeed, Harper.”
“I’m telling the truth.”
“Why the fuck would you actually do that?” That bitter edge returns to his voice, making each word slash like a switchblade.
Don’t let Cian confine you , a faraway voice reminds me.
Even if my escape attempt for today failed, the only way I’ll have a shot at trying again is if I keep my limbs free and Cian’s trust firmly planted in me. I can’t let him continue with this outrageous story he’s concocted in his mind. I need to prove to him I’m telling the truth, but I can’t unless…I pretend to have other motives.
“Because I want you to believe me.”
“Of course you want me to believe you.” He crushes me against the shelves with the heft of his body. “That’s how you always lure them into the trap.”
An anvil drops through me, breaking everything it touches on the way down.
“What are you talking about?”
I try to play dumb even as panic detonates inside me.
“Remember, Harper Brennan. I know what you used to do for your father in the clubs.”
Cian knew what I was doing, the whole time? He knew I was using what my father taught me to wrap him around my finger?
Shame crashes over me, and I sway on my feet. Obviously he knew. He’s one of the Kings’ top enforcers. Part of his job is to see through more complicated shit than this. Why did I think I could fool him with a few smiles and wide-eyed stares?
He was just playing along, probably to see how far I’d take things.
Cian must think I do this all the time. Kissing whoever I need to kiss, spreading my legs whenever I need to get my way… He probably believed I was a whore for hire when he set foot on this island, and now he knows it’s true. I let him use me.
I even enjoyed it.
His touch was so good, I started to care about him. Just a little.
Joke’s on me, I guess.
Because I’m the only person who got manipulated in this scenario.